Up­dat­ed: No­vo Nordisk bags new obe­si­ty tar­get in lat­est biotech ac­qui­si­tion, inks R&D deal with spin­out

No­vo Nordisk has found an­oth­er obe­si­ty-fo­cused biotech to buy as it looks to build on the suc­cess of its block­buster semaglu­tide fran­chise. And this time, it didn’t have to look far.

The Dan­ish drug­mak­er is snap­ping up Copen­hagen-based Em­bark Biotech for €15 mil­lion ($16.3 mil­lion) up­front and up to €456 mil­lion ($496.4 mil­lion) in mile­stones. That gives No­vo a lead pro­gram for obe­si­ty and oth­er car­diometa­bol­ic dis­eases, which hits a tar­get that, ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­nies, “sup­press­es ap­petite, in­creas­es en­er­gy ex­pen­di­ture and en­hances in­sulin sen­si­tiv­i­ty.”

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